It’s official. Lauren Mitchell is in the Floor final later today, defending her title from 2010. Diana Bulimar from Romania has withdrawn.
She (and all the Australians) take maximum advantage of the oddity that evolved when FIG decided to disallow women to step back out of tumbling passes — a leap, jump or random flutter kick out after landing.
Lauren does those jumps as correctly as anyone else.
Jumps to disguise lack of control on landings have been used by male gymnasts for decades, but the trend is quite new for girls. It’s smart to use the rules to maximize your score. Especially if you gain bonus for connection.
Personally I don’t mind the jumps. But the old “lunge backwards” was better. Requiring a two foot “stick” would look good — but result in more landing injuries. And we have too many of those now.
Many disagree. Leave a comment if you are one of them.
• for some reason he took out his “safe” double layout, replacing it with a piked double front (FALL) … Olympic dream ended.
• and, for some reason, … he decided to wear a Dutch orange outfit for finals, including orange socks. The first orange socks in Worlds history, I would imagine.
… OK — the women’s all-around competition was a close decision. The ladies of the International Gymnastics Federation scored it this way:
1. Wieber 59.382
2. Komova 59.349
3. Yao 58.598
All 3 medalists had significant “errors”.
Though the final ranking was a surprise at the time, it’s clear that Komova and Wieber should have been very close in final score. It could have gone either way. Either gymnast could have “won” Worlds … if they’d not made mistakes.
source unknown
Jordyn Wieber is World Champion.
Too much is being made of this drama. All three gymnasts (and many other rivals) will soon be back in their gyms training for the Olympics. Psychologically, it’s tough to be world champion going into the Olympics — though Jordyn can handle that challenge better than Vika, I reckon.
The Russian media has jumped all over this, claiming some American conspiracy. … If Vika had won, Americans would be claiming that chief judge Nellie Kim manipulated the final Floor score. (Nellie can’t win, either way.)
Nobody I know has faith that the current rules, and current judges, are capable of accurately differentiating two close performances.
THE ALL AROUND is trying to interpret the new FIG regulations.
So far — it looks like —
MAG teams: JPN – USA – CHN – GER – RUS – KOR – ROU – UKR
MAG Floor: 3.Diego Hypólito (BRA) + Alexander Shatilov (ISR)
MAG PH: 2.Cyril Tommasone (FRA)
… Kristian Berki (HUN) gold winner and Louis Smith (GBR) Bronze don’t reach criteria.
MAG Rings: 2.Arthur Zanetti (BRA)
Confusing. … And what happens if Brazil qualifies a men’s team at the test meet?
WAG teams: USA – RUS – CHN – ROU – JPN – AUS – GER – GBR
3.Phan (VIE) qualified
This is the best guess of Albert Minguillón i Colomer. We’ll wait on Stoica and Kim to tell us officially. Media has not heard a word from either one, so far, in Tokyo.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 